


Philautia

by hitlikehammers



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Sex, Established Relationship, First Time, Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life, The Only Material Things One Really Needs In Life Are Probably Coffee and Pork Cutlets, learning to love yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10940076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: Contrary to all presumptions and appearances:erosis not the end of the story.Or: Yuuri figured out one kind of love. Mostly.But he probably should have known it wouldn't be that easy.





	Philautia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RC_McLachlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/gifts).



> For one of my very favourite humans on the planet, nay, in the galaxy: [RC_McLachlan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rc_mclachlan)—a kind-of surprise gift where I decided to watch the thing she liked, and the thing she writes about quite a bit now, and then I tried really hard to write something about it, ish, for her special day. This is the result, shared with much love from across the sea and wishes for many more journeys around the sun. Happy birthday, doll <3

Contrary to all presumptions and appearances: _eros_ is not the end of the story.

Not that Yuuri actually thought it would be. He wasn’t blind enough, or self-deluded enough to pretend he hadn’t been lusting over Victor since he first laid eyes on him, wondering what it might feel like to pull on the length of that silken hair, feel those elegant fingers on his skin. No, Yuuri is a number of things, but he’s not _that_ oblivious. 

Usually. 

And what’s more: he’d never expected love to enter the picture. From the program Victor thrust upon him to the moment every secret not-so-secret fantasy he'd had since forever became reality, if not in the immediate moment then in a promise to come, it had been a whirlwind that too often, most often, felt like a dream. Yuuri was always just this side of waiting to wake up to the reality where people like him didn't find themselves next to people like Victor, and dreams didn't come true because this was the real world—when it was worst, in fact, he'd retreat inward, trying to find the snag in the illusion, the lie in the fabrication that would let him unravel it. Victor didn’t realize he was speaking aloud, or else, Yuuri doesn’t think he realized it. But he’d said, once, that when Victor was looking for something that he grew quiet, and his eyes sparkled, and he wouldn’t rest until he’d found the thing he was looking for.

Sometimes, he was looking for the lie in the impossibility of Victor being there. With _him_. 

Which is not to say it was always like that, even in the beginning, or that it hadn't got better as time went on, as they grew together and into what they were. Because it did. 

But _eros_. 

Yeah, Yuuri should have probably known that the torch he'd been carrying for more years than he'd like to admit aloud, kindled to flame to wildfire in the time between: he should have known it'd be too easy if sharing a bed and pressing close between the sheets was all there was to figure out. 

(He doesn't actually think _agape_ would have made it any easier, mind you, but that doesn't stop him from grousing otherwise, every so often, silently. In his head. To himself.)  
__________________

“Morning, Piggy.”

Yuuri sighs, because he catches Yurio out of the corner of his eye, leaning cross-legged against the wall around the ice as Yuuri comes off, and Yuuri might not be the most observant person all the time, beut he knows that’s not a _real_ greeting.

It’s a prelude. And with Yurio, that’s… 

That’s something. It’s always _something_.

“Have you had the opportunity to,” Yurio smirks and quirks his brow in that weirdly menacing way he has that’s strangely teasing and that Yuuri doesn’t think he’ll ever quite understand; “ _enjoy_ your Katsudon yet?”

Yuuri blinks. He’d thought the double espresso was enough this morning, after his rather, um, late night, but he’d not been anticipating Yurio this early in the day, so.

“Wha,” Yuuri stammers a little, because he’s still processing what the hell Yurio means. “What?”

Yurio studies him as a second, squinting before his smirk spreads into a full-out wolfish grin.

“Fucking hell,” Yurio leans heavier, folding his arms and settling from satisfaction into a radiating sheen of smugness. “You _haven’t_.”

“No, I mean, I did, kind of,” Yuuri babbles a little, and he really wishes he’d have gotten a triple, that would have maybe helped, and Yurio doesn’t even _like_ pork cutlets, or else, not _really_ so why does he ever care, which maybe means he doesn’t _actually_ care, that’s probably more likely.

But it’s _katsudon_ , and Yuuri, sleep-deprived or no, will _always_ take that seriously enough for everyone. 

“It, well, of course, it wasn’t like home, but—”

“You’re an idiot.”

Yuuri glances up. He’s confused. Yurio watches him, as if he intends to wait out Yuuri’s proper response to being deemed an idiot. Yuuri, on the other hand, has absolutely no intention of trying to form said response. 

He is going to continue to blame it on the coffee situation, though.

Yurio rolls his eyes, finally, and gives in, which Yuuri knew he would because for among the young man’s most glaring… _characteristics_ is a chronic lack of patience.

“Have you fucked _Victor_ yet, was the question,” Yurio enunciates clearly. “The answer to which is, clearly, a resounding _no_.” Yurio clicks his tongue. “A surprise, to be honest. You are not usually one to deny your,” he snorts; “ _appetite_.”

“Have I…” Yuuri is slowly piecing things together, and he’s glad he’s not on the ice just now, honestly, because the way his cheeks start to burn could likely melt it. 

“If that was the question, why didn’t you _ask_ that?” Yuuri demands before the real question finds its way past his lips. “Why _would_ you even ask that?”

“Curiosity,” Yurio shrugs, hands in his pockets as he eyes Yuuri up and down once more. “But you have done _something_.”

“We’ve done things,” Yuuri protests, a bit proud, a bit defensive; “lots of things.” They were _engaged_ , of course they’d done _things_.

“Not _that_ ,” Yurio says bluntly, and still somehow manages to taunt: another thing Yuuri’s never going to understand.

And well, fine. Not that, no. Not _yet_. Yuuri’s fingers play unconsciously with the ring on his hand.

They haven’t. But they will.

“What does that even matter?” Yuuri changes tacts, largely out of necessity; lack of any other approach, though he’d never admit it aloud, and Yurio just laughs anyway, and saunters away, and Yurri could probably spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what the hell he’d been doing there in the first place, but that’d be a wasted day if ever there was one.

Which could also be said for the words he says aloud, hands in his hair as he groans. 

“What does that mean? What do you mean?” he spins when he hears Yurio’s cackling in retreat, which only causes Yuuri to groan louder.

“What does that even _mean_?!”

__________________

“Maybe some bicep curls, just to tone this up?”

The designer’s team is taking Yuuri’s measurements, as the man himself circles endlessly, sizing him up with a hand on his left arm—a young, up-and-coming name living Burbank with family roots in Khanty-Mansiysk, who makes gorgeous, glittering numbers that hug just right while never impeding movement, his daughter being a skater, in kind. She’d asked him to recapture the “glory days” of the Russian style, star-studded and impossibly ornate, and he’d been gaining momentum in bringing back the trend. Victor had been utterly transfixed by the idea, but oddly decisive in not indulging in commissioning one himself. _You’ll look delicious_ , he’d told Yuuri with a spread of his arms; _why deprive us both, you of a dazzling costume for Vancouver, and me of a spectacle to salivate over? And then,_ he’d leaned closer then, mouthing at the lobe of Yuuri’s ear; _take apart afterward, in every way you may choose to interpret that promise._ Which had made, well. 

Had made sense, really. 

And in response to the commentary in the present, that instruction to muscle up, innocent and idle as it’s delivered: there’d been a time when Yuuri would have immediately agreed, and would have run straight to the gym to lift just the right weight to tighten and not bulk, over and again until his arms felt like they’d detach from his body, the skin like jelly and the bones like melting butter—and then he’d have got up the next morning to do it again, and again, and again.

But somehow, looking at himself now in the splay of mirrors that surround him, he sees Victor’s hands on his body, on his arms to draw him close, to reach as he moves to balance his own frame above Yuuri’s, to kiss up and down and trace muscle with tongue, and they’re passing through from a pit-stop in Detroit for a quick bit of nostalgia, and Victor’s in the hotel waiting for him to get back and oh, hell.

“No,” Yuuri says, more to his own reflection than to anyone around him; “no, actually, I’m pretty happy with where I am, on,” he clears his throat; “on that.”

And maybe the corners of his mouth quirk a bit, for no reason he can put a finger on specifically, really; but then, maybe that’s not the point. 

“Hmm.” The designer eyes him critically—not negatively, but thorough about it all, before he tilts his head and bites his lips a little as he nods. 

“You know, my apologies,” he says, with a pat to Yuuri’s shoulder. “I rather agree.”

And Yuuri doesn’t quite hear anything after that for a while, as the measuring continues around him, and notes are called out and jotted down and the fitting goes on, with Yuuri’s body at the mercy of their scrutiny but his mind wholly fixated on the hotel room where there will just be a wooden door and keycard lock separating Yuuri from Victor’s naked frame, no less captivating than the naked lust in those impossible eyes, and yes.

Yes, Yuuri thinks he’s pretty happy where he is. In general.  
__________________

“I thought we were burning that suit.”

Victor’s hand is in the back pocket of the trousers of said suit, drawing a yelp from Yuuri—still, fuck, and he wonders if he’ll ever have his dignity back when it comes to Victor’s hands on him in public but maybe that’s counterproductive; maybe that’s beside the point—a yelp that only causes Victor’s grin to curl up around the glass in his hand.

Which Victor knows drives Yuuri a little bit crazy. And Yuuri has a sudden surge of confidence, or maybe he gives into that smirk-driven-insanity, before he leaves Victor’s hand in his pocket, and uses his own hand to grab the martini from Victor’s lips and lift it to his mouth instead.

“I like this suit.” 

Victor quirks a brow at him, sipping at the drink and relishing the taste less than the dilation of Victor’s pupils.

And maybe Yuuri is improbably, uniquely susceptible to this particular martini on this particular night, because he leans in and captures Victor’s lips just then, and lets it get a little heated, a little heady in a way he doesn’t tend to embrace in public, let alone initiate, and Victor’s belated reaction is a testament to that, but when the reaction comes it’s passion incarnate, dear _lord_.

They’re both breathless when they pull apart, and Yuuri’s proud that it’s him who recovers first, Victor’s still blinking a little bit dumbly as Yuuri reaches to remove Victor’s palm from Yuuri’s ass and fits it instead around Victor’s drinks as he hands it back. 

“I suppose it does look good on you,” Victor says absently, and Yuuri smirks at the way he’s still visibly reeling, the rush of it just this side of thrilling. 

“But only because it is you in it, of course,” Victor clarifies quickly. “It is absolutely unacceptable in the general sense, you understand.”

And Yuuri snorts, and leans his head so that his jawline hides the way he nips at the corner of Victor’s lips as he teases back:

“Of course.”

__________________

“Do you want another?” his mother asks adoringly. They hadn’t planned to stop at the resort, but it was on the way, and maybe Yuuri had wanted to see his family and maybe Victor had seen that but had declared that Makkachin missed the pools, which is bullshit.

Victor maybe knows Yuuri too well.

“Yes,” Yuuri nods with a smile, letting his mother not just serve him _another_ serving, but fill his bowl entirely with more than a single, or even a double second-portion. 

“Be careful,” his father warns goodnaturedly, patting his middle indicatively and nodding at his wife as example: “you’ll—”

 _End up back looking like your mother_ rings out unsaid as Yuuri takes a not-at-all-defiant mouthful; too much, honestly, but Yuuri chews his heart out and Victor looks like he might choke on it vicariously as he watches with not insignificant amusement at what Yuuri can only imagine his face looks like just now. 

And Toshiya, he doesn’t mean anything by it—Yuuri knows his father loves both himself and his mother, but Yuuri remembers how it would have sent him on a run, or else feeling guilty while he cleared his plate not so long ago, and maybe it’s not exactly advisable to eat as many pork cutlet bowls as _Victor_ does, but.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

The words are out of his mouth before he can think, but they’re not ones he doesn’t mean, or regrets, and Victor’s smile goes from entertained to adoring in the way that makes Yuuri feel like he’s had too much champagne: unraveling. Invincible. Tingling and so very alive and oh.

Finishing his meal is exquisite, pure _agape_ , and he doesn’t regret a bite. 

__________________

It’s just a keychain. 

It was a gift, from Victor, and it makes him sick to think of not having it, of losing it somehow even though it was a simple thing, not even for a holiday—not for a birthday, not a lucky charm (as if he’s ever let _those_ out of his sight), not for an anniversary, not...it’s just a keychain. From one of the rare trips they took apart, that Victor brought back with a kiss to the nape of Yuuri’s neck and a promise that there wasn’t a night that didn’t feel empty without Yuuri next to him in bed.

Which is why it’s not just a keychain that he lost, it’s the memory. The promise. The recollection tangible in his hands and the threat that it could happen with anything, his grasp so slack, so prone to, to—

He sighs, or tries to. Breathing feels...wrong. His lungs feel wrong. He feels cold, and faint, and very much alone.

And love’s changed him, he knows that, has known it now long enough for it to be a thing he feels and isn’t surprised by anymore. It’s made me stronger—and it’s in his bones, now. It’s real.

But it doesn’t change who he is, what he is, not everything. 

Victor slides in behind him, flesh to flesh and it feels divine, and the tightness in his chest gives a little when Victor wraps around him, rests an open hand just where the knotting, anxious pull lives because he knows that much, now. Victor doesn’t understand it, and probably never will, but it doesn’t matter: love’s changed him, but not everything. It’s made him stronger: not to throw off every obstacle, but to weather them better. More whole on the other side.

With arms there that maybe can’t empathize, exactly, but are always willing to help put him back together, build him back up.

“Yuuri,” Victor murmurs just beneath Yuuri’s ear, and Yuuri doesn’t even pretend not to lean into it like it’s lifeblood, like it’s air.

“I am wondering, perhaps, if,” and Victor stills, pauses, and the tightness that was easing under Victor’s hand seizes again.

“If?”

 _Don’t leave_ , is the first thought that runs through Yuuri’s head, and he knows it’s silly, absurd even, but it’s there. _Please don’t say you’re wondering if you can go out, or if we’ve made a mistake, if we’re making a mistake or if I mind if you go even if you never go, even if this is where we live, together, engaged, but please don’t leave_—

“Nevermind.”

And Yuuri thinks he might come straight apart at the seams in the worst way for a second that almost destroys him, but then Victor just settles in closer, holds him near tighter, and kisses three times straight down the line of Yuuri’s jaw:

“Goodnight.”

And Victor doesn’t let him go, doesn’t do anything but stay, and _staying_ : that’s all Yuuri needs.

He reaches up and folds his hands around Victor’s upon him, and the tightness starts to ebb, and it’s quiet, and Yuuri’s nearly on his way to sleep when Victor whispers to him, deep and fierce with it:

“You know that I do love you, _da_?”

And Yuuri sighs, and leans into him all the more.

“Yes,” he murmurs back; “I know.” And it’s true.

He does know.

And he wakes on his own, but there’s a keychain on the pillow where Victor’s head would normally rest, and Yuuri grabs it, and smiles as he fingers the cheap, cutesy plastic, much like the one lost, and oh, yes.

He knows it.

__________________

“How was that?” 

Which is the question that should have been directed _toward_ Yuuri, not the one he should be direct _ing_ but shoulds probably should have—

Damn. 

_Shoulds_ have _definitely_ run screaming out of Yuuri’s life, and it’s probably for the best.

So he’s the one asking at the side of the ice as he watches his mentee-of-sorts catch his breath in the center of the ice.

“You did more,” Minami gasps out, frowning, biting his lip as it quivers between rage and sorrow. 

Yuuri holds in his sigh, because he knows he's been the same way for _much_ longer than Minami’s even had a chance to be—and Yuuri knows enough that, even if their mind’s aren’t the same, the way those landing’s had been nailed didn’t mean anything, the number was still lacking and that was that.

Yuuri knows that feeling. Yuuri doesn’t know if he’s got a grasp on things enough himself to talk anyone else through it.

But he’s got to try, doesn’t he? So he turns the sigh into a deep steadying breath and…

Tries.

“It’s not about how many,” Yuuri starts, and knows that sounds as useless as it is. He’s heard it before.

“It is in the scoring!” Minami cries out, still wavering on that blade’s edge between fury and absolute devastation and, well.

Yuuri knows that one from experience, too.

“It,” Yuuri starts, and thinks _What would Victor do?_ before stopping himself because that’s a horrible idea, and probably the worst thing to apply to this particular scenario, so he shifts it— _What would Victor tell me to do?_—and, well. Victor’s already done that, so it’s on him now.

Shit.

“Well, it took me way too long to realize that the scoring comes second.” Which Minami shows him sounds as stupid as he suspect with an eye-roll of epic proportions. 

“But,” Yuuri tries to lean in and pitch his voice and make it sound a little like a secret, or else, less trite than it sounds because Yuuri and words and this sort of thing are… well. 

He tries, is the thing.

“Love it enough, and I _believe_ that a single can be as beautiful as a double,” which, honestly? Yuuri wouldn’t have believed in a million years, before he’d learned it from a kiss; before he’d felt it in his bones for himself on the ice, the numbers that went up in retrun be damned. 

“And when you make it a triple, or a quad?” he walks just that little bit closer to Minami, and clasps his arm encouragingly. “Think of what _that_ will look like, when it grows out of something like that.”

And Minami meets his eyes, skeptical, and rightly so. But Yuuri does believe the triteness, because there’s a kind of love that this is all about, in the end, and at the end of the day skill only shines for the passion it in. Talent only lasts, only burns brightly enough if it pumps in your blood and moves your limbs as you go.

Or, well.

Yuuri. Words. Trite.

He _tried_ , right?

“Right.” Yuuri’s eyes snap up as Minami clenches his jaw and nods. “Right, okay.”

And Yuuri grins, because maybe trying is part of the loving. Not so much trying to love, he thinks, but maybe learning to love the trying, and the seeking, and the finding along the way.

But whatever it is: Minami grins a little as he pushes back toward the rink, only pausing at the very edge of the ice. 

“You’re sure?” he asks, and Yuuri thinks: yeah.

Loving to _try_.

“No,” Yuuri shrugs, and Minami’s smile threatens to fall but Yuuri meets it with his own quick enough to save it. 

“But here’s the secret,” he leans against the wall and meets Minami’s questioning, maybe a little bit scared gaze. “No one ever is.”

And when he tosses his head encouragingly for Minami to get back out there and give it another go, he actually believes what he says—not really things he’s never heard before from other people and scoffed at, though maybe in a different order, a different shape; but for the first time, unexpectedly, he believes those words for himself.

Huh.

__________________

“Sweeten that?”

Yakov comes out of nowhere, and Yuuri doesn’t pretend that’s the only reason he jumps a little, because jumping a little is kind of a natural reaction for him when it comes to Yakov—scratch that, no, it’s kind of a natural reaction for most normal people when it comes to Yakov, and Yuuri will never understand how a man of Yakov’s size and presence has ever managed to just pop out of _nowhere_ as easily as Yakov seems to. Regularly. 

“Umm,” Yuuri says into his cup with a shrug, side-eyeing the flask. “No thank you?” 

It’s vodka, undoubtedly, and Yuuri’s honestly not even sure how that ever goes into coffee, but it’s Yakov and it’s really _really_ early, plus they’ve crossed like five time zones to get to Japan, and so he doesn’t waste his limited, pre-caffeine brain power on the matter.

Not that he’d get any farther with it if post-caffeine, because it’s exhausting in itself just trying to make any sense of ninety-percent of the thing Yakov says, let alone does. 

“Suit yourself,” Yakov huffs and takes a seat he doesn’t ask for. Not that Yuuri would have told him no, it’s just.

It’s just. He buries his face a little into his coffee, and wishes he were in bed.

“How is Victor?”

“Well,” Yuuri answers carefully—carefully because of the asker as well as carefully because Yuuri wishes he were in bed to sleep, but also because he’s fairly certain that’s where Victor is right now, because Victor wasn’t a moron who promised to be somewhere at the crack of dawn. “He’s well.”

“Good,” Yakov says flatly. “I would not wish to have this conversation if he were not,” his expression doesn’t change at all, Yuuri watches it carefully just to be sure, but somehow, inexplicably, he manages to infuse all of the deadly threatening into just a single word without any facial cues as he tacks on: “ _well_.”

Yuuri does not shiver. He does _not_ , and if he does it’s because it’s cold in here, yes. It’s actually really cold in here, huh. Yuuri should probably talk to someone about that, yes, he should do that, maybe right now actually—

“Be good to him.”

Yuuri startles. “Me?”

“Yes,” Yakov says, eyeing Yuuri as if he’s a domesticated animal of middling intelligence at best; it is not the first time Yakov has looked at him in this way, so he’s learned to recognize it: “ _you_.”

Or ‘middling’ is an overstatement. Possibly that.

“He will stay here, I think,” Yakov proclaims casually, and it takes Yuuri a second for it to sink in.

He’s talking about Victor. Victor, staying.

Here.

And Yuuri’s not actually sure how they ended up pseudo-settling in _anywhere_ on their own, just yet—month-to-month, so nothing permanent by any means, and any reason that Yuuri can think of for it being _here_ , beyond simply convenience and coincidence, is far too sentimental for his tastes—but _here_ , the one that Yakov’s talking about. Well, yes, it’s _here_ here, now, but he thinks Yakov could have said it just the same way if they’d crossed paths in Moscow, or Barcelona, or Sydney or Los Angeles or Buenos Aires or wherever. 

And that’s terrifying, honestly. And not just for the steely gleam in Yakov’s eyes that, frankly, never seems to actually go away, ever. 

“Maybe,” Yuuri says warily, a little shakily, just to say _something_ because it seems like the sort of thing that does require a response. Given the givens.

Yakov shakes his head, and keeps his eyes fixed on the ice.

“No maybe.”

Yuuri nods, even though he’s not sure what he’s nodding to, exactly, or if nodding’s really indicative of what he thinks or believes, and even though Yakov probably doesn't see it and wouldn’t care all that much even if he did. Again: it seems like the sort of thing he should do. Ish?

“He will stay here, unless you leave here,” Yakov adds idly, nodding himself this time. “Then he will go with you.”

Yuuri’s heart does that little thing where it trips and then slides upward and knocks hard in his throat, catching on all his words as it falls back down to where it takes to pounding in his chest.

“You, um,” he swallows hard. “You sound sure.”

Which, much as Yuuri trusts Victor, and trusts what they are and have and believes in it—long as it took that to take hold and root—but as much as all of that’s true? Yuuri’s not the kind of person, for all that he’s grown, to take something this big, this _much_ for granted. Not forever, at least.

Not...yet. If he’ll ever quite get there. ‘There’ seems very far, and very much not made for him, less for earning and more just by design.

But Yakov just smiles, or does whatever passes for a smile on his face, and takes a long glug from the flask before he stands and walks away. Yuuri doesn’t know that he looks like a fish with his mouth hanging open, but he can feel it happening, and knows that he probably does, and—

Yeah. Yeah, Yuuri should probably just give up on ever quite understanding Yakov at all, and just drink his damned coffee.

__________________

They’ve got a good rhythm to it, now—being together and competing at odds, sometimes in concert, with healthy one-upmanship but always with joy. They watch one another and they comment, compliment, critique with ease; Victor had always had it, but Yuuri’s finally grown into that groove, that safe space of comfort in telling Victor he did well, or was sloppy (which he is, sometimes, much as Yuuri would once have denied it, and hell if it’s not a privilege to _know_ it, now), and even to suggest something new, something different, and to know between them both that everything would be taken under advisement, any bruising to ego would be soothed once the sting faded, and in the end they were in agreement: skate to make their own selves proud. Be as much in love with what they show the world on the ice as they are with _what_ they are, where the world can’t see.

It’s a good rhythm, and a sweet reminder every day at the back of his tongue, the corner of his mind: _eros_.

Without it, they would never have got here. Without that slightly sadistic choice—because Yuuri’s not willing to pretend it was foresight on Victor’s part, though sadism was probably pushing it in truth, but point being, _without_ it, they’d likely have never gotten here. And _Here_ was a fairly incredibly place, warts and wall.

And it’s amazing, how the breathlessness he’s feeling, knowing now on the ice after finishing his program is a new thing, here at least—new in that it mirrors with absolute gorgeous feeling of the threat of death, of never knowing enough air again as he drowns a little Victor’s eyes, in his body, spun alongside the feeling of being most incredibly, intensely alive as he’s ever touched, ever known, and suddenly that capacity for _feeling_ follows him to the rink: that breathlessness. Life and death tied up into the most impossible rush, usually reserved—revealed, first—under Victor’s hands.

He straightens, and glides off the ice into the expected presence of his lover, but the unexpected, unrestrained embrace, the frantic press of lips against his, and the breathlessness that’s heavier, huskier in Victor than in Yuuri, even after skating his heart out, save that his heart’s right here: and love. Love’s right here, so very close and real. Bigger than the _eros_ it blossomed from, so much more now, so much stronger wrapped around in his chest like a braid, a voe, and he might win this, actually. This might be the title he takes that means…

Victor takes his hand, and envelopes the ring there, and Yuuri knows deeper, now, than he ever has that they were never waiting for a win.

“You were amazing,” Victor mouths into Yuuri’s skin, pressing him close. “I’ve never seen you like that.”

And Yuuri flushes with warm not just across his skin but deeper, much deeper: and yeah, Victor’d never seem him like that before because it had never _been_ like that before. Because even as things had evolved, even as he had changed, it was still about skating, performing, trying to _exist_ to a standard beyond his own making, for things beyond his full grasp and hold: judges, scores, numbers, expectations, images, his competitors, the man in his arms, the myth and the legend he’s grasped on for so long, the fear of failure and the need to make it go away—he’d moved and breathed to that rhythm for so long, so _long_.

But they’d made a new rhythm, and it sank deep into his heart, into his blood, and yes. This had been different, entirely.

“I,” Yuuri trips over the words as the implications sink in: “I know.”

Because for the first time, likely ever? Yuuri Katsuki had give his soul to something, loved unreservedly, but this time solely for _himself_.

__________________

After the performance earlier—from them both, in the end—it’s maybe no surprise that the night ends like this: early, to the taunting of their colleagues and rival-friends, but pinned against the wall of their hotel room, Yuuri doesn’t mind one bit.

And maybe Victor’d been the one to press him there, but Yuuri’s got his thighs braced up around Victor’s middle, and he’s the one steadying them, somehow, as Victor turns mindless, overcome, and trembles just the slightest bit. 

And that’s Yuuri’s doing. Yuuri has that power.

It’s intoxicating.

They’re on the bed without ever breaking the contact between their lips, Victor braced on top of him as they fall, and much like the skating, this feels different.

They both know how, and why, even before they’re both stripped down and bare, eyes locked and having a full conversation between them before any words are said.

“It is your first time,” Victor whispers, feather-brush against the corner of Yuuri’s mouth, palm braced against the heaving of Yuuri’s chest, though close enough to catch that touch between the heaving of his own. Yuuri’s hand under Victor’s hand is racing, but he laughs, and he means it.

“I happen to be very much aware of that.”

Victor barely moves, staring at the hand on Victor’s chest.

“I have,” he swallows hard, the brush of his gasping breaths brushing against Yuuri’s chest all the more swiftly; telling, though still a bit of a hard to believe. “I have never been with someone who,” he leans in, and kisses Yuri’s skin in between Victor’s own fingers; “for whom it was their first time.”

Yuuri’s still smiling just a little, because Victor hesitant is always newness, always something to behold and cherish because Victor often treats his love as a given, it’s not always said plainly, and this? This is what puts it on full display.

“You realise that just about everything we’ve done has been my first time,” Yuuri reaches, and covers Victor’s hand, feels his own racing pulse from the outside and it’s oddly titillating. “You’ve done just fine so far, I think.”

Victor’s eyes widen, glancing up through his lashes as he swallows hard. 

“This is,” Victor shakes his head, unmoored. “This is different.”

It is, maybe. Inevitable, and long-awaited for it, but different.

But:

“That’s okay.”

Victor lifts up a little further, twining his fingers with Yuuri’s and bringing them to his mouth.

“I may not be very good at it, at taking care, at,” Victor falters; “what you need.”

And what Yuuri needs, right now? It Victor, actually, as so often it is. And Yuuri happens to know what Victor is more than just ‘good’ at of giving himself.

So he links his arms around Victor’s neck and pulls him down, invites Victor to drown in him first, and Victor gives, immediate and desperate and so open in that way Yuuri will never fully understand but will always be grateful for, to have, to call _his_. They move less as a beautiful forgone promise and more as foreplay to something deeper, something new, a different promise that means something less for the physicality and more for the way it crosses into territory uncharted, for them, and start proving more and more solid, more real and enduring as Victor reaches, preparing him gently but efficiently, knowing exactly what he’s doing but exploring, learning avidly as he goes, and Yuuri feels it as the rhythm they’ve eked out starts to settle in this, and Yuuri thought he’d be nervous. Thought he’d be more reticent, but it’s natural, it’s perfect, it’s pressure and heat and a little bit of pain, like training and straining to reach a new peak: that sore ache that means he’s building something up to reach a higher plane, and here, this?

This, they build together.

And the rhythm translates, permeates, makes and remakes them as Yuuri moans, rocks into the momentum, gasps as he urges Victor’s hand around him, stroking counterpoint to the way he presses in, pulls back out and never once leaves Yuuri wondering if he’ll come back, fill him again—it’s as much ecstasy as anyone’s ever described it, as Yuuri’s ever dreamed but it’s more than that. It’s a coming together that speaks to some bigger fuller, brighter, and when they both _do_ reach that peak, frantic and brilliant and shining and new in a way that Yuuri suspects may never lose its gilded sheen. And god.

God, it’s _his_.

“You’re crying,” Victor notices before Yuuri himself does as they settle, as their breathing fills the room alongside the heavy musk of heat and satiated desire, though never spent; and Victor looks appalled and terrified and it breaks Yuuri’s heart, because Victor might be the one with experience, and plenty of it, but in this, like this, Yuuri realizes now more than he ever has before: they’re well matched, in uncharted territory.

It’s exhilarating. 

“Sorry,” Victor stumbles, trembles, frames Yuuri’s face a little desperately with his hands. “I’m, I don’t know, I didn’t mean—”

“No,” Yuuri shakes his head, and smiles as strong as he can, even as his lips tremble without his permission or consent. “ _I’m_ sorry,” he reaches to cup Victor’s face in kind and bring him down for a salty kiss. “You’re not good with people crying.”

“Yuuri,” Victor leans his forehead against Yuuri’s, his voice a little broken, strained: “I can be good, with,” he chokes on something, and Yuuri keens with the need to comfort, and draws Victor down on instinct into the crook of his neck. “I can be good with crying, if I have to be, for someone I, I,” and he kisses, sucks full with feeling against the side of Yuuri’s neck before he pulls away, breathing heavy less with lust and more with pure emotion.

“I can try to be good.” Victor whispers there, ever syllable cracking. “But I don’t think I can ever be,” his hand snakes back across Yuuri’s chest, settling at the very middle where it tends to gravitate, grounding and perfect and made of something perfect. “I don’t think I can ever be _good_ , with _you_ crying.” 

He shuffles down a bit more, and rests his head alongside his hand on Yuuri’s chest, his breath hitching but warm. “Because you _are_ someone I…” and it’s Victor close to tears, now, Yuuri can feel it, and Yuuri wants to spare him. So he pulls him up and kisses him hard.

“It’s okay,” he swears against Victor’s lips, and tongues at Victor’s bottom lip, traces his teeth until the naked, raw feeling in Victor starts to intertwined with sensual need again: steadier ground.

“I am the one who is supposed to say that,” Victor finally huffs; “I know that much.”

And Yuuri smiles at him, and Victor’s eyes shimmer at the sight.

“Good tears,” Yuuri promises; “they’re good tears.”

And Victor just stares, just marvels, and it used to make Yuuri a little uncomfortable, but right now?

Right now, just now, it feels like a gift that would be unforgivable in denying, in even trying to question or push away.

“I love you,” Victor murmurs, pressing kisses that mirror it back and again across his cheeks, down the line of his jaw.

And again, yes: _eros_.

It changed his life, really. But that wasn’t the half of it. 

_Loving_ transformed Yuuri’s world; made him stronger. And love was so much more than _eros_. Love was loving, and learning, and seeing, and feeling. Love was giving, love was for another, toward another, with another, in another, through another: but.

But love is also, Yuuri’s started to understand, for and toward _yourself_.

“I love you, too.” And saying that is stronger, because love has made him strong—saying that is stronger now, which really only makes sense, because if you’re just giving love, or taking love, without holding your own love—even if it’s a wavering thing, still finding its legs—how much love can you really share? 

It’s almost like Victor feels it, senses it, too, this minor revelation of the known: because Victor nuzzles into him close and breathes with hands that roam up and down Yuuri’s body, and it’s incredible, because Yuuri loves the touch and what is touched; Yuuri loves all of it, without reservation in that moment, and that moment may only be now, but it’s something. No: more than something.

It is beautiful. It’s _enough_.

So _eros_? That was really only the beginning.

And Yuuri thinks he’s genuinely looking forward to what comes next.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
